For interfacing with the garage door I knew (from my one) that there was the ability to add a wired push switch to the garage door to “toggle” it. However I had no idea what voltage/current this used as it was not listed in the manual. I also knew that other garage doors would potentially have varying specifications regarding this. This meant I needed to find someway of using a relay with the Raspberry Pi instead of just using the GPIO straight to the garage door (in case of blowing up the Raspberry Pi).
Looking around I found a few before settling on the Pimoroni Automation Hat. This add on for the Raspberry Pi includes the following:
- 3 relays with Normally Open (NO) and Normally Closed (NC) functionality
- 3 digital outputs
- 3 digital inputs
- 3 analog inputs
This piece of tech would easily allow me to control up to 3 garage doors (I only need one but I thought of large American garage’s). It would also allow me to have a hall affect sensor to know if the garage door is open or closed at some time in the future.
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